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The Speed of Squatting

One of the most common practices in domain name speculation is for individuals to register domain names related to current events immediately after news of the incident breaks. Particularly popular targets for this practice are celebrities – it seems that whenever a star is involved in an activity that attracts media attention, especially a scandalous one, squatters rush out to register domain names related to the incident and capitalize on the buzz generated by the news. It is often astounding how quickly these squatters move to snatch up the most pertinent domain names for breaking events.

Take, for example, Tiger Woods, who was involved in a car crash outside of his home last week. According to the Florida Highway Patrol, the crash occurred at around 2:25 AM on Friday, November 27. That same day, even before details about the nature and cause of the crash were revealed, the domains TigerWoodsCrash.com, TigerWoodsCarCrash.com, TigerWoodsCarAccident.com and TigerWoodsAccident.com were registered. Of those domains, the first three are Pay-Per-Click sites. The final domain, TigerWoodsAccident.com, hosts content related to the accident, including speculation and rumors.

Another majorly newsworthy event that took place last week was the crashing of the White House State Dinner on Tuesday by a Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi. The couple managed to sneak by security and enter the White House despite not being on the guest list and managed to get photos with multiple guests, including Vice President Joe Biden, which they then posted to their Facebook pages. As it turns out, Mrs. Salahi has been auditioning for a role on the reality TV program “The Real Housewives of Washington.”

Perhaps squatters were more preoccupied with brining their turkeys on Wednesday than with registering domain names, but the registration of domains related to the dinner crashing moved surprisingly slowly in comparison to the Tiger Woods incident. By Thursday, only WhiteHouseCrashers.com and TheWhiteHouseCrashers.com had been registered, followed by WhiteHousePartyCrashers.com on Saturday.